


Gambit Declined

by AJHall



Series: Queen of Gondal Universe [12]
Category: Gondal - Bronte children, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M, gondal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-11
Updated: 2012-10-11
Packaged: 2017-11-16 02:51:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 15,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/534671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AJHall/pseuds/AJHall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gondal, 1668.  The Court is a hot-bed of rumour, gossip and barely restrained tensions.</p><p>Queen Felicia worries.  She worries about her inability to conceive a child, about her husband's wandering eye, about the ambitions of the heir-presumptive, Prince James and - most of all, perhaps - about what "that Royal brat", the fifteen-year-old hostage Prince Sherlock of Gaaldine, is going to spring on them all next.</p><p>A shot rings out across an autumnal lake in North-Eastern Gondal. But at whom was the gun truly aimed, and how many decades will it take before its echoes finally die?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to caulkhead for betaing and sillymouse for expert guidance on wildfowling and seventeenth century firearms.

A river of courtiers flowed out of the chapel into the Great Court. That vast space dissipated the torrent into innumerable pools and eddies. From her hidden eyrie she saw everything. 

Great lords dispensed measured patronage; rivals peacocked in competitive display; sworn enemies passed each other in the throng, bearing poniard-sharp smiles and murder in their hearts.

The chaperones had allowed the de Samara heir and the eldest Moran girl almost a quarter of a turn's awkward, intense conversation beside the great lead troughs planted with flowers. The families must favour the match. Not an alliance to be encouraged. Time to drop a suitable hint in the appropriate quarters.

That, though, was merely public business. Important, but secondary. She did not withdraw to her tower of shadows merely to observe what was plain to anyone who troubled to open their eyes.

Within sunlit, leisurely promenades like the one unrolling below a delicate game was in constant progress, its moves the lift of an eyebrow, the palming of a note, two men conspicuously leaving the courtyard by different exits. 

The trading of information, the only currency worth anything in the illusory, treacherous world of Court.

She clenched her teeth. Today one nugget would be trading at a premium.

_"The Queen's grace has sent her tiring maid for linens."_

Probably it had been whispered before even the girl had returned with the necessaries. Certainly Ambrosine had known. She had read it in his face as they met in the ante-chapel before Mass. Weariness, bone-aching disappointment and a deep-buried hint of roiling anger, sharpened by the hope it had begun to feed on.

Six weeks, this time.

Time was running out. Prince James would be a grown man soon. Already he was acquiring his own coterie; insecure youths loaded with ambition and inherited resentments. They strode through the court in twos and threes; loud-voiced, dressed in the extremes of the current fashions, expecting lesser beings to leap aside or be trampled underfoot.

Ambrosine would have to take decisive action. But how could he move against indiscipline and premature ambition, when outright betrayal lay within his own wife's body?

_"The Queen's grace has sent her tiring maid for linens."_

The girl had returned with a suggestion.

_"They talk in the laundries of a Dr Shlessinger, ma'am, who has helped others in like case. May I not contrive to send word to him? I could say I was enquiring on behalf of a married sister. No-one need know."_

Shlessinger. These days, that name was popping up everywhere. Not spoken aloud, but whispered in corners and chalked upon walls He had, it was said, travelled to China, to the court of the Khan. In Vienna he had raised from the dead a child who had fallen in the river. And – always – came stories he had lifted the curse of barrenness from women who had sought his aid.

His methods had brought him into conflict with the Church. There were tales of unsanctioned doings in churchyards, cabalistic signs scribbled on gravestones. For such as she to have dealings with the Shlessingers of this world was perilous indeed.

_But not so perilous as to do nothing. No-one need know. Should those dealings prove fruitful, no-one will dare to ask._

Down on the Great Court two strolling figures – one dark, one fair – paused. The dark one looked up into the wide, snarling mouth of Bel's dragon on the massive carved frieze, as if his eyes could pierce the concealing stone and see into her hiding place, read her intentions and her thoughts. 

She swore.

His Serene Enigma, Sherlock, Prince of Gaaldine. Or, in language confined to the privacy of the kingly bed, "That impossible brat. He's done _what_ , now?"

The fair boy touched the prince's arm, attracting his attention. That must be the physician's boy, Hamish Watson's son. Holy Virgin, if it hadn't been for his clear head and courage last night, the court _would_ have something to gossip about, those clots of blood in her chamber-pot overwhelmed by a rising flood of gore.

_Prince Sherlock's broken body, sprawled beneath the Caitiffs' Tower. Troops despatched post-haste to strengthen the border. The old eagle of Gaaldine, raging north in fire and wrath and retribution._

Dear God, they owed the Watson boy a debt for getting the prince – the raging, intoxicated, wild-eyed, babbling prince – down from the heights without anyone being hurt. A hard debt to repay, if the boy had inherited half his father's stoic, kindly integrity. (The only one of the dozens of physicians she had consulted who had made no attempt to link the state of her womb with the state of her devotions.)

Didn't the boy have a sister? Doubtless a place could be found for her among the ladies of the bedchamber. The current crop were a vacuous, chattering crew; someone new would shake them up. It would bring the girl into contact with everyone who mattered, give her a gloss of court polish, make her noticed. An advantageous marriage for Hamish Watson's daughter would benefit the whole family.

Down below, the fair boy and the dark strolled off, arm in arm. She had promised Ambrosine she would tackle the matter of last night. Especially today, she had no intention of opposing his will in the smallest particular. Dr Shlessinger and whatever he promised could await another season.

Felicia rose from her stool in the cramped cubby-hole behind the frieze. She despatched the first page she saw with a summons to the Prince of Gaaldine, to wait on the Queen's grace within the hour.


	2. Chapter 2

He stood on the far side of her desk, feet spaced in a comfortable parade rest, meeting her scrutiny with neither curiosity nor apprehension. She tried not to let that rankle. 

_Even foreign princelings bear witness to my increasing irrelevance._

He had made an impressive recovery from last night's excesses. His skin was pale as ever, but without any greenish tinge. The whites of his eyes were clear; his skin no sweatier than the heat of the day – unseasonably intense, for late September – might fairly account for.

Youth. For the moment the ten years difference in age between them yawned as if it had been a hundred.

"I was angry, not drunk," he said, the first words he had uttered since entering her presence. At her pointed lift of her brows, he amended, "At least, being drunk wasn't the _point._ "

She made a mental note to rebuke the page. Letting the prince know why he'd been summoned was not merely indiscreet. It undermined her authority.

_Such as remains to me._

"No-one said anything," Prince Sherlock said, a hint of affront in his voice. "I'm not _stupid._ What else could you have wanted to see me about, today? But it wasn't simply a drunken stunt. I leave that sort of thing to imbeciles like Douglas."

She let the reflection on Lord Douglas – one of the loudest and most dense of the heir presumptive's set – slide. 

"That makes your fault the greater. You must be aware, your grace, that you are not just our guest and dear friend. You are a living pledge of the bond between our kingdoms. Your presence here is a trust laid on us. Your grandfather would have taken it as a sore breach had you fallen from the tower last night."

Something like pain flickered in those extraordinary eyes. It was gone before she could be certain she had seen it. 

"Indeed, Grandfather would resent bitterly anyone who rendered one of his gaming pieces null before he was ready to discard it. I regret I caused you anxiety, ma'am." His voice changed slightly; the courteous monotone acquired a sharp edge. "But not as much as I regret the trouble that will come when my grandfather's game changes."

_The trading of information, the only currency worth anything at Court._

She leant forward across the table. Her eyes watered beneath a fresh onslaught of pain as she did so.

_Not now, Holy Virgin. Not now._

She had awakened to a dragging ache in her back and belly. Before any tell-tale signs had appeared in her water, she had known it for what it was. That morning, before she had even sought energy to summon the girl, she had already lived in fancy through each stage of disappointment, threat, loss, supercession and death.

Couldn't the pain do her the courtesy of holding off for the duration of this interview?

The prince looked down at her. With the same detached courtesy as before, he said, "There is a tisane my cousin Genia uses, for relief during the flowers. All the herbs used grow in Gondal as well as in Gaaldine. If I write down the recipe, the Palace herbalists will have no difficulty –"

The crystal ink-bottle shattered against the far wall. She had not been conscious of picking it up from the desk, barely conscious of throwing it. Only as the ink – viscous as blood – dripped down the wall and pooled on the polished floor did she realise what she had done. 

The door opened and a terrified head poked through. Her confidential maid, alerted by the crash. 

"Ma'am –"

"Are there no ratcatchers in this benighted country?" Prince Sherlock's voice had reverted to the ultra-finicky, lisping accent of Gaaldine, which had provoked so much mirth among the court bloods during his first few days in Gondal. He gestured, dramatically, towards the wreckage in the corner of the room.

"Sir?" The maid's voice trembled. Her gaze flickered from the prince to the Queen, as if, belatedly, she'd realised where her duty ought to lie.

The Queen favoured her with a tight-lipped, mirthless smile. "When I am finished here, ensure the appropriate people bring ferrets or terriers or light poisonous smokes to destroy any nest which may lie within the walls." She paused. "And have someone fetch wine."

The wine came in a graceful, swan-necked jug, its handle and lip of chased silver. Morbidly, she wondered if the servitor expected it, too, to end up in a shattered mess in the room's corner. She gestured to the prince, indicating he should sit opposite her in the chairs either side of the low table beneath the window. When the wine had been poured, and the servitor had withdrawn, she let her feelings rip.

"Is there nothing for anyone to do in this palace but bribe my maids to divulge the secrets of my chamber?" 

"Oh, please. I didn't need to ask anyone. Your expression gave you away. Pain, followed by anger, mixed with frustration. Pain might be anything; that combination, given your situation, had only one probable cause."

Prince Sherlock's accent was back to normal; that of a Gondalian from the capital, of good birth and education. It had not occurred to her before to appreciate the perfection of his mimicry. 

_We are all of us players. And may the Holy Virgin protect us against the day the crowd ceases to applaud._

"My father once put out a clerk's eye with a paperweight." Once the words were out of her mouth, she didn't know why she'd said them. Not as a boast: the whole affair had been a clotted mess. Growing up, she'd scarcely been able to think of it without shame. Not the violence, she realised belatedly. The meanness.

_Papa had more in common with Uncle Gerald than I had thought._

"Fortunate, therefore, that Grandfather's sergeant-at-arms ensured I became practised in the defensive arts." The prince seemed rather pleased by the diversion. "And that your aim is not entirely precise," he added, as if by way of afterthought.

She refused to be drawn. "Whatever the source of your information, it is not my affairs of which we were speaking. As to your grandfather-?"

All traces of humour vanished from the prince's expression.

"He would indeed have resented it bitterly had I fallen from the tower last night." He paused, as if trying to find the best way to phrase a delicate matter. Which, given his normal conversational style, chilled her more than she could express.

"Spit it out."

"It would not have suited my grandfather's plan for me to have died last night." He raised his head, so he could look steadily into her eyes. "But he does not intend for me to leave this land alive, nonetheless."

She did not for one moment consider asking him how he knew. "You are under our protection."

"Yes." His mouth twisted, wryly. "I assure you, I will not blame you, when that protection fails. Though, if it helps, I think it will not be tested for some little while to come."

Later, she would wonder why it had not occurred to her to doubt that certainty.

For now, she was a Queen and the country was in her trust. And if she couldn't secure its safety one way – the only way, some would have it, that a woman could – then by God and all his angels she'd do it another.

They were being manoeuvred into an occasion of provocation, were they? They needed to take steps to protect themselves. Her mind ran on fortresses, supply lines, water resources.

Moments later it struck her with a faint, dull ache that she had thought first of her borders, not of the boy who sat before her, coolly estimating the time within which his grandfather might best contrive his death.

_Boys die all the time. Even princes. At fifteen, this one has had two years more than fate allowed Sebastian._

She dragged her thoughts away from her brother as she had last seen him, bled white from the wound, his flesh already waxy in death. Sebastian was gone, and with him all the possible futures where she lived out her life as the King's sister and the safety of the realm did not depend on the quirks of her recalcitrant womb.

Sebastian was beyond her aid. Sherlock was not. She looked across at him.

"You do not, I take it, know how this threat will manifest itself." She had not made it a question, nor did he take it as one; he merely lifted his chin slightly to acknowledge the point. "Well then, should you obtain more information, I request you bring it to me." She felt his silence and added, although she had not intended to do so, "Yes, to me. I'll not have Ambrosine troubled before he need."

"You mean," the prince said, "that his grace the King would not merely dismiss it as grandstanding on my part and womanish over-fearfulness on yours, but would forbid further involvement by you, to the detriment of all? I believe you to be right on both counts."

She forced herself to smile. "Your grace, I said what I said. Don't go looking for meanings behind another's words – or, if you do, keep them to yourself. This is a hot-tempered court."

"And getting myself killed in a duel would serve neither my purposes, nor yours, nor even my grandfather's?" 

"Quite so." Her tone was dry. "Incidentally, Ambrosine will encounter you later today and propose that you accompany him on a hunting trip to the royal lodge in the Northern forests. That is not – however expressed – to be taken as a _request_."

The prince's brow creased. "He wishes me to go hunting with him? Why?"

"Because he believes – on the evidence of last night – that you have suffered a disappointment." 

She saw the prince's mouth open and raised a hand to forestall whatever impolitic words he was on the point of uttering.

_Your grace, if you cannot see the King's belief for the piece of good fortune it is, then you deserve your grandfather's wrath._

The Royal family of Gondal sprang from an archaic stock; border lords who could weep at the beauty of a harpist's performance while, out of the corner of their mouths, ordering their enemy's infant son to be kidnapped, castrated and sold in the Sultan's slave marts. Those twin strands of savagery and sentimentality ran close to the surface in Ambrosine. For him, Prince Sherlock's excessive response to the news of his brother's betrothal could have only one cause. The lad must have been pining for the lady himself.

It had done the prince good in the King's eyes; humanised him, rendered him less strange. And she was damned if she would let any inconvenient facts get in the way of that _rapprochement._

"Yes," she repeated. "A disappointment. Ambrosine's reaction to a disappointment is to seek something to kill. And he reasons that what works for him will work for all men."

The prince's eyes widened. He had understood. Good. 

Belated inspiration struck. She would, later that day, speak to the Mistress of the Robes and see whether a place could be contrived for Hamish Watson's daughter among the ladies of her bedchamber. But for now – 

_The trading of information creates its own ledgers, and the imbalance in this one must not be allowed to continue._

"If you wish it, you may ask the King for leave to permit your friend, young Watson, the physician's son, to accompany you." 

The prince's face blazed up in sheer joy; she felt something twist deep within her. Perhaps, long ago, before Sebastian's death, she had had access to such pure feeling. No longer. Nothing, these days came wholly unalloyed by pain, fear and cold prudence.

Not even the giving of a gift. She cleared her throat. "That is, provided you can vouch for his skill with a fowling-piece." Ambrosine's standards were notoriously strict; it would never do to burden his party with an incompetent.

"Of course I can vouch for it. John's the second finest shot in Gondal."

That qualification – the hint of a childish vanity in one who was in most respects so ahead of his years – amused her. She didn't allow herself to smile until he had left the room, though. Appearances must be preserved.


	3. Chapter 3

John blinked. At a little before dawn, the courtyard at the rear of the palace would normally have been deserted, save perhaps for sentries and an occasional chambermaid.

Instead it buzzed with life. Two wagons, loaded with gear and provisions, were already trundling off under the archway. A third was being loaded up, amid much swearing.

He noticed he was the only man of any rank present. The other members of the party must have had better intelligence as to what the _real_ time of departure was. Either that, or they were more afraid of displaying naiveté by arriving early than of risking the gross error of arriving later than the King.

The King. The very thought made him shiver.

_A hunting trip with the King. The King and a picked band of companions._

_And Sherlock._

_Dear God. Holy Virgin. Any saint who might happen to be keeping his or her sanctified ears open._

_How many candles do you want me to light? Because, believe me, you've earned them._

Servants sprang for safety before a storm of approaching hoof-beats, jingling harness and furious snorting. Sherlock swept in through the archway on a vast black horse. They came to a rearing stop, his mount's enormous hooves crashing down inches from John's boots.

John looked up into Sherlock's face.

"Glad to see you abandoned the plan to make an ostentatious entrance."

Sherlock slid to the ground and patted the horse's neck.

"I didn't know how this one would react to a crowd. He's not had long to get to know me. He was a present. From home."

 _Home._ A pang stabbed him. 

Sooner or later Sherlock would be recalled to Gaaldine, and then not merely a hostile mountain range and half a thousand years' cantankerous history would lie between them. The gulf in rank between a physician's son and a prince of the blood might be narrowed – though never entirely forgotten – while the latter was a boy held hostage at a foreign court, dependent on an erratic and meagre allowance. Not so when he put on his royal duties in earnest. Probably this gift, the first conspicuous notice Sherlock's family had paid to him, denoted a change in status from a boy pawn to a youth on the edge of manhood, scion of a powerful house.

_And so someone who could never be anything more than a distant patron to the likes of you. Whatever – else – you might desire._

Sherlock looked at him sidelong. He gulped, reminding himself that the prince was not, after all, a mind-reader. Which was just as well. For his last three confessions John had counted himself lucky it had been the nervous younger priest, who regarded an admission of "lustful thoughts" as both self-explanatory and something about which he preferred not to hear further details.

"Anyway, I was planning to send him back – Mycroft needn't think he can buy me off that easily – but it then occurred to me that if I kept Ajax, it would leave Hector for you."

On cue, a groom led Sherlock's usual mount through the archway. John's jaw dropped. 

"You mean, me, borrow Hector?"

Sherlock frowned. "Well, what were you planning to ride?"

There was a great deal John could have said to that, but it would have entailed revealing the last few days' desperate scurrying around in an attempt to borrow some animal other than his elderly mare Vila. Notwithstanding her sweet disposition and sure-footedness, her feathery forelocks and ugly, beloved, plebeian head put her out of place in the most exalted circles.

"Oh, really, John." Sherlock's sigh could probably have wakened anyone still sleeping in the palace. "You only had to ask. Even if I hadn't been given Ajax, I'd have found you a –"

He froze, his eyes fixed on a point over John's shoulder. "Oh. He _did_ invite him."

John turned. Swaggering in through the archway came a courtier in yellow satin, glossy black waves of hair sweeping his shoulders, fleshy lips curled in a sneer.

"But isn't that –" 

Sherlock's hand clamped down on his arm. "Since you'll be riding Hector, he has a few quirks I should warn you about." He drew John over into the angle of a buttress, part-turning so his face was concealed from the new arrival. "Yes. That is Sebastian Moran. Don't look so surprised to see him."

"But I thought he clove fast to Prince James." 

"Until the night before last, so did we all." 

That casual use of "we" – to signify those, presumably, at the centre of court gossip – summoned up that impassable gulf once more. John tried to keep the pain from his face. Sherlock glared at him.

"I'll tell you once we're on the road, out of earshot of anyone. But for now – you know Moran's a famous gamester?"

John nodded. Since the Royal invitation had arrived his father had been full of advice. "Don't get into games of chance with anyone," had featured extensively. When he'd protested that he knew enough not to get into games he didn't expect to win, his father had said darkly that, in court circles, grasping the art of when to lose was far more important. The name "Sebastian Moran" had come up often, despite John's protestations that Moran would not make one of the party. 

John's grudge against his father for having been right after all transferring itself effortlessly to Sherlock, for whom being right was a permanent (and irritating) state of being.

"So what?" he demanded.

Sherlock made a sweep of those long pale fingers which sent John's thoughts off down a different path. By the time he'd recovered them Sherlock was saying, "…and of course, he couldn't challenge the heir presumptive, whatever he'd said."

"Awk?" 

"I _said_ ," Sherlock repeated, "that the prince had accused him of using a marked deck – in front of General Napier and Count Cavan, as if either of _them_ wouldn't have spotted foul play at the outset _and_ said so – but Moran couldn't issue a challenge. Well, he _issued_ one, of course, but the general told him to stop his nonsense and sent someone to rouse the King."

John nodded, suddenly seeing exactly what his father had meant about the art of losing. "And the King?"

"Banished Prince James from court for a couple of weeks, to teach him to take his defeats like a man. But of course, the King still had to make amends, given the slur had been uttered, and not avenged the _traditional_ way." Sherlock sounded as if he were a natural philosopher who regarded the Gondalian court lords as exotic specimens. "Anyway, any more is for the road. See how the servants have stopped flapping around and started to look as if they mean business? The King's on his way."


	4. Chapter 4

The last of the wagons vanished round the corner in a cloud of dust. The party would dawdle here, a league from their destination, long enough to allow the baggage to reach tonight's castle and for some poor devil of a house steward to juggle the competing demands of space and protocol to allocate accommodations and get all squared away. The party would ride up in the twilight to find hot water awaiting them and clean clothes laid out. Over the last few days it had become a settled pattern.

The King's party had barely managed eighty miles progress north in almost a week. The lords along the route competed with each other to welcome them with extravagant entertainments and to throw open their own hunting preserves for their pleasure. 

So what was it about the Earl of Fountainhall's carefully staged impromptu entertainment which set off faint but unmistakeable alarm bells?

John glanced across the sunlit glade at the banquet loaded on trestles; at the purple and silver pavilions glimpsed between the trees, at the chamber orchestra, sawing sweatily at their instruments. The fringed canopy protected them from the sun, but did nothing to relieve the airlessness of the forest clearing.

Ah. He had it. Sherlock hadn't said a word for almost half a turn of the glass.

 _That_ was what he'd been missing. At each earlier event he'd been in an agony of fear lest someone overhear Sherlock analysing their current hosts in a scatter of bitten-off comments.

"Spent the last drops of his wife's dowry on this masque – wasted, the King loathes it. Taps his middle finger on his thigh when he's bored." 

Or "That's a boxed stag we've been hunting. Captured miles away and brought in to give the King sport. What happened to the herds that should be here? Poachers – no, forest fires. Burnt patches on the opposite hill. Too regular to be lightning or woodcutters being careless with cooking fires. He's at feud."

The chamber orchestra paused; those players furthest from the dais ventured to push back wigs, loosen neck-cloths or wipe dripping brows. 

The Earl led a young woman wearing what appeared to be a court dressmaker's idea of a wood nymph's costume before the King. She sank into a deep curtsey. He smiled and said something which – even from here – caused a visible blush to rise to her cheek. The Earl smiled likewise. The King patted the arm of his chair. Someone thrust a stool forwards. The young woman sank down beside the King.

The orchestra resumed playing.

A bitten-off snarl came from beside him. He turned to see Sherlock stalking out of the clearing. With an apologetic glance towards the party on the dais, John scuttled after him. 

He wasn't, and never would be, the tracker Moran was (much as he disliked the aristocratic prick, John was scrupulous to give credit where it was due). Still, the prince was making no effort to cover his tracks.

He caught up with him about a quarter of a turn later, sitting at the edge of a little tarn, throwing stones into the water.

"Well?" he demanded.

"Well, what? Did Napier tell you to follow me?"

"Napier? Why on earth should he? He's still with the King. And he doesn't order me about, anyway. What's going on?" 

Sherlock's eyes were stormy, his expression evoking all kinds of unwelcome memories, that night on the Caitiffs' Tower top of the heap. Hesitantly, John extended his hand and rested it on Sherlock's arm. The prince allowed it to lie there for a moment. Then he rose in a swirl of movement, his hand going to the neck-lacings of his jerkin.

"I'm stifling. Let's swim."

He didn't wait for John's response, but stripped with brutal efficiency. After a moment John did the same.

"Race you to the other side," Sherlock said, and dived straight from the rocks, reckless of depth or of possible underwater obstacles. 

The cool water washed away the choked confusion of earlier. They splashed, twisted and turned in the water and, at length, hauled themselves out of the water onto the flat slabs of rocks on the tarn's edge to dry off in the sun.

Sherlock's body was an impossibly angular composition of spiky, contorted limbs and tangled curls which would have had a classical sculptor weeping in frustration. John arranged himself very carefully on his front, and, by way of distraction, enquired, "So, what's up?"

"Oh, John, really. You saw that girl – " He waved an expressive arm. A shower of diamond drops arced from his skin and pattered into the water. The shiver that trembled down John's back had nothing to do with the late afternoon breeze which had sprung up to vex the surface of the tarn.

"Who was she?"

Instantly he regretted it. Sherlock's face became a drawn mask.

"The girl? The Earl's youngest daughter, of course. She doesn't matter. Did you see the King?"

He pictured the scene on the dais: the laughter, the blushes, the Earl's expression. "Sherlock, he's the King. I imagine that sort of thing happens all the time. It doesn't have to mean anything."

Sherlock pushed himself up onto one elbow. "It means something when it's Grandfather."

The King of Gaaldine's amours had been a by-word throughout the three kingdoms for almost half a century. To the extent he'd thought about the matter, John had assumed custom had inured his family to whatever shame or fury it evoked. Not so in Sherlock's case, evidently. 

Once again, John wondered what the young prince had seen in his time, down in that hazily imagined southern palace. Someone should have looked after him.

"Aren't you getting yourself a bit worked up?" His voice was a conscious echo of his father's to nervous patients. "After all, even if the King – admires – her, what can possibly happen, given who she is?"

There. Calm and logical, like a proof in geometry. Whatever Sherlock might fear, he had to see that a King of Gondal would hardly put the safety of the realm at risk by violating a virgin of noble blood. Not under her father's roof.

"General Napier." Sherlock's voice was a low, concentrated growl, his eyes fixed on the brown waters of the tarn as if he expected a rusalka to rise from it and drag them both down. 

"What?"

"Do concentrate, John. Napier's recently widowed. And he's wealthy but from no sort of family. And the King owes him, after that business with Moran and Prince James."

For a moment, the prince's words seemed to make no sort of sense. Then – 

"You think the King's going to manoeuvre the Earl into marrying his daughter to Napier so as to clear the way to making her his mistress? And that her father and the general will go along with it?"

For a moment Sherlock's face bore a disbelieving, dismissive expression – _Who can credit the ignorance of these unsophisticated peasants?_ Then he sighed and dragged his palm down over brow, nose and lips: a gesture of frustration John found unspeakably endearing.

"If it was home – if it was Grandfather – then I'd _know_. But here? You expect people to be the same, and mostly they are and then suddenly they're _not_."

The last word came out high and accusing, making John abruptly aware of how young the boy was. A salutary reminder, especially at the moment. 

"You must miss Gaaldine. Still, perhaps the peace will settle down soon, so you can go home."

For a moment it was as if he'd inadvertently slipped into some foreign tongue – save that Sherlock spoke all those he knew. Then the prince blinked and, his voice utterly uninflected, said, "We'd best be getting back to the fête."

They dressed in silence and in silence walked through the woods. Back in the glade, a certain raggedness had crept into the orchestra, denoting incipient collapse and/or mutiny.

Sherlock inhaled on seeing the Royal party. "Things not going entirely the King's way. Interesting. See who has moved to flank the Earl?"

"The vulpine man in green?" John hazarded. "And the tall, fair man who stands uneasily, as if from an old wound?"

"His sons-in-law, John. The girl's sisters' husbands." Sherlock surveyed the scene. "Neither of their wives are here, of course. Too busy about their domestic duties. Did you know, the Earl has close on a dozen grandchildren already? No small achievement, for a man still in his forties."

Leaping from one apparently inconsequential remark to another was typical of the prince's conversational style. John ignored it.

"I suppose it's a help for a man in his position. Being able to see a long succession."

Sherlock's expression showed he'd had some blinding insight, more infuriating because he showed no trace of any inclination to share it. "You are – at times – a prism. You know the girl's first name, of course?"

John shook his head.

"Sarah. But – given her sisters – there's little fear of her following her Biblical namesake when she weds. That's it. The long game." He turned, as if to go.

"No – wait – what?"

He turned back. His smile was blinding, with no trace of mirth in it.

"I think Napier's nuptials may have been postponed. _Sine die._ "

With which he swung off into the throng, and John's chance to ask for further enlightenment was lost.


	5. Chapter 5

The reed-beds on the further side of the lake rippled in the dawn breeze, betraying no hint of the beaters working within. Crouched in the stand, John checked his powder-flask and shot for the sixth time. The dog, picking up on his tension, quivered from nose to tail-tip. Sherlock made a small sound of impatience. John grimaced in reflexive annoyance.

The chief loader – a grizzled old man with a long-healed powder burn to one side of his face – grinned. 

"Save it for the ducks, sirs."

"Shut. Up." Sherlock's voice was barely a whisper. It cut like a whip-crack. 

The loader shrugged, as if his lot in life was to be shouted at by those more highly placed than himself, and he'd long since ceased to let it trouble him.

With a fast drumming of wings the first bird scared up by the beaters crossed the lake.

"Too high!" 

Sherlock's warning was superfluous; John had abandoned any intention to take a shot almost before his gun had reached his shoulder. 

Someone hadn't been so restrained. "Boom" went a gun on their left. Then a second shot, louder, hard upon the first.

Instantly, Sherlock was on his feet, forcing his way out of the stand, heedless of noise. For a moment sheer terror paralysed John.

"You can't – "

Words and imagination failed him. Interrupt King Ambrosine's sport, just as a drive was commencing? He grabbed the prince's sleeve.

"Let me _go_. Don't you _listen_? That second shot wasn't from a fowling piece."

"What?"

"Rifle-gun. Assassin. Look to the King. If you still have one."

Horror yawned, a bottomless pit beneath John's feet. The two of them, plus loaders - and the dog, dancing excitable circles at this unwonted change in routine, too well bred to break training and bark - tumbled out of the stand.

Outside a scene of chaos reigned. 

A group of shouting, gesticulating men milled about beneath one of the trees of the heronry which occupied the higher ground, behind the narrow ribbon of marshy pasture which fringed the lake. 

To John's immense relief he spotted the King, in front of the third of the eight stands along the lake-shore. Moran stood at his right-hand side, his air of swagger unmistakeable. Two guards flanked them.

Most of the other nobles, including the Earl and his daughter, stood in an uneasy knot a little way from the King. A wise precaution; even at this distance cold rage radiated from him.

Sherlock barely spared the noble portion of the party a glance. He set off at a dead run towards the group under the trees.

"Get back, my lord! It's no sight for a boy." The sergeant-at-arms was a solid block of muscle, six feet tall, with arms thick as thighs. He spoke with the guttural accent of Eastern Gondal, John's home province.

Sherlock's nostrils flared. Before he could say anything, John strode forward. 

"Let me through. I'm a physician." Not the time to quibble about an incomplete apprenticeship and the longed-for, ever receding promise of Glasstown's school of anatomy or – fragile, cherished hope – that of Padua or Leyden. 

The men parted. As they did so John added, in the dialect of his childhood, the tongue of shepherds and fishermen from the salt-marshes, "The boy, as you call him, is the grandson of the wolf of Gaaldine. From that stock, do you really doubt he was blooded before he was breeched? He comes with me."

The sergeant-at-arms saluted, as if despite himself. John made an absent, courteous acknowledgement and pushed past, Sherlock following. 

The body sprawled beneath the tree, amid broken twigs and heron droppings, was a ruined mess. He knelt by it, felt for a pulse at the neck – he had never ceased to be amazed, over six years following behind his father, at what the human frame could survive – and was relieved to find nothing. The blast of shot had torn away any recognisable features, burst eyeballs, left nothing but a bloody wreck.

"Lord Moran," the sergeant-at-arms said, from somewhere above his head. "Caught sight of him in the tree, got a shot off just as he was aiming." A stubby finger stabbed down, indicating a gun on the ground. "Saved the King. A fraction later –" He spat, eloquently.

"French design and stock; metalwork by a gunsmith out of Saxony." Sherlock, thank God, was living up to the reputation John had given him. He crouched down in the blood-soaked mud and picked up the weapon. "Maker's mark engraved on the plate here – _oh_."

The monosyllable bore an almost unbearable weight of recognition, surprise and – pain?

"What is it?"

"I know the cipher." Whatever emotion John thought he had detected in Sherlock's voice was gone. "Father had a matched pair of wheel-lock fowling pieces from this workshop. A gift from the King of France. On the occasion of his marriage to my mother, the Princess Royal of Gaaldine." 

He straightened up and raised the gun to his shoulder, sighting down the buckled, twisted barrel towards the group of nobles by the lake. There was some little commotion there; it seemed the Earl's daughter had fainted.

"A long shot, but a weapon fully capable of achieving it. In the right hands." Sherlock let the gun fall to his side. "This is no petty plot." 

He nudged the dead body with the toe of his boot, so it flopped over on its side, what was left of its long hair mercifully shielding the ruined face.

"Whoever armed this man set him to hunt the noblest game of all. But not with some border bandit's weapon. A gun worth upwards of a thousand thaler, from a workshop open to only the very highest families of Europe. That fact will, I think, be of particular interest to the King."

This time the sergeant-at-arms' salute was by no means perfunctory. "Will your grace attend him to share your conclusions yourself?"

Adroitly handled; John could only admire it. After a moment Sherlock nodded. "Prepare his grace the King for disturbing news. I shall follow in a moment."

The sergeant-at-arms nodded, and withdrew. Sherlock plucked John by the sleeve and drew him aside from the mob around the body.

"Tell Santiago and Hamish to have our bags packed, the horses fed and watered. We'll travel light and fast once the order's given. Any comforts they can contrive, I'll pay."

His mind a blizzard of unanswered questions, he nonetheless nodded, as if all were plain and easy to him. The right response; the prince's expression cleared.

"Good man. See you later."


	6. Chapter 6

Even given Sherlock's warning, John had been taken aback by how fast the party got on the road. They were a depleted band, Napier and two of the other senior lords vanished who-knew-where and the baggage wagons and body-servants left behind lest they slow their progress.

Sherlock and Moran rode each side of the King, the Royal guard pressed close around them, forcing John to the rear of the party. A dozen miles down the road the rain began, first as the pattering of fat drops on parched earth, then a driving, relentless downpour. It cut visibility to mere yards, made a thick red porridge of the churned earth. 

They made camp on a heath, as night was falling. No fires were lit. John contrived a bivouac against one of the sparse thorn trees, wrapped himself in blankets and lay down. Rest remained at bay, banished by the persistent dripping of rain through the canopy and the dank cold seeping into his bones.

"We left summer by the tarn," he muttered into the dark. He drifted, at length, into a nightmare in which Sherlock and the faceless assassin became one and the same, pursuing him through the forest, gasping out clotted, unintelligible pleas from its ruined lips.

He woke, to find a sodden Sherlock burrowed in beside him, snorting and muttering in his sleep. The effect was not unlike having one's bed invaded by a large and undisciplined wolf-hound.

The only glimmer of hope about the whole business was that Sherlock seemed to be equipped with an internal furnace. For the first time since entering the bivouac, John started to feel warm. He pressed closer to the prince, who muttered something incomprehensible and turned over, flinging the back of an open-palmed arm across John's throat. 

"Fine," John muttered. "Choke me, why not?"

Whether the sound of his voice got through or not, Sherlock turned his arm. It now lay palm down, lower, across John's chest, a gentle weight.

"I can live with that. Thank you."

The prince was oblivious to his surroundings; John might as well have been a cushion. Still, the warmth was – nice. 

When he woke again the prince's hand was digging into his shoulder, fingers biting deep.

"Too soon," Sherlock hissed in his ear. "Why shoot so soon?"

"Uggh - ?"

"Moran." The grip on his shoulder tightened, impossibly. "You shot too early and I _will_ know why."

The long fingers shifted; John's hand shot up only just in time to protect his throat. 

"What the hell – Sherlock, you're asleep!"

All the medical texts said that one should not startle a sleepwalker into wakefulness. John could only assume they had never had to deal with a sleepwalker making a very determined attempt to throttle one.

Five years younger than John, the prince was already an inch or so taller, with a wiry, hard-trained strength which sleep did nothing to diminish. John, too, had to fight as if with one hand tied behind him, avoiding serious damage, while Sherlock had no such constraints. 

After a short, intense struggle he managed to flip Sherlock over, so that he was straddling his chest. He leant forwards, caught Sherlock's right ear and twisted.

"Wake _up_."

The prince came to his senses in a great gasp, limbs flailing. When John, alarmed, caught his wrist the pulse raced beneath his fingers.

"I'm sorry – oh, hell, I'm so sorry."

In the dark of the bivouac he couldn't see Sherlock's face. The prince's voice, though, had a ragged edge of desperation.

"What was I doing?"

John pulled Sherlock close and made his voice gentle. "Don't worry about it. You were dreaming I was Moran. So, perfectly sound instinct to choke me. You just need to work on the execution."

"I dreamed you were Moran?" Sherlock rolled away and propped himself up on his elbow. "Did you – what else did I say?"

John paused for a moment.

" _Tell_ me."

"Something about him shooting too soon, and you wanting to know why. What was all that about?"

There was a charged, tense silence. Then – 

"It's safer if you don't know."

John put up a hand to touch the tender spot at his neck. "Excuse my mentioning this, but I've got a bruised voice-box that would like to disagree. When it's able to." He heard a quick sound of impatience from Sherlock. He continued before he could interrupt. "No; don't treat me as if I'm stupid. I know I'm a nobody, and not in anyone's inner council. But one thing I do know. If you don't talk about it when you're awake enough to know what you're saying, who knows what might happen next time you fall asleep? Suppose you'd been sharing a bivouac with Moran?"

"He asked me to, actually. He's got one of those oiled canvas campaign tents. The King thought it would be 'most suitable'." He could hear the bite in Sherlock's voice. "Not that I would have slept, if I'd been sharing with Moran."

The implication of trust set a warm glow in John's chest, but the prince's next words shattered that. 

"Of course, perhaps not sleeping was his intention. One does hear things."

 _Not if one is a physician's son, rather than a lord of the court_ , he wanted to say, red rage rising in his gullet, his whole body tight with unexpressed fury.

"You're upset." Sherlock sounded vaguely puzzled. 

Half a hundred possible responses went through John's mind. He rejected all of them.

"Acute guess, there. Well-observed."

Sherlock's hand snaked out to encircle his wrist; the firm, almost brutal pressure set John's heart beating erratically. He prayed the prince didn't ask why.

"Moran's a bastard. But he's the apple of the King's eye, at present. It's dangerous to oppose him. They can't do much to me – at least, not openly. But they could take you for questioning if they thought I'd told you anything. They could drag you away to the Caitiffs' Tower and I wouldn't be able to stop them."

The thought chilled John more than the earlier rain. He was, though, a realist. Furthermore, his apprenticeship might be incomplete, but in his heart he had been a physician for as long as he could remember. For all Sherlock's assumption of a maturity well beyond his years, the prince's strength was that of the bow, not the pike. If he did not unburden himself, he might well snap.

With his free hand he gently eased Sherlock's hand from its convulsive grip round his wrist, and interlaced their fingers together. 

"Ssh. Stop trying to blame yourself. These are high politics we've stumbled into, and we'll get out of them the same way we got in. Together."

Sherlock's voice sounded oddly diffident. "You do realise, if I tell you, and they do question you, you must not tell? Whatever that means?"

His mouth was suddenly dry. "Yes. But it's too big a secret for one man to hold. There was a plot against the King, after all."

"There was." Sherlock paused. "Tell me what you saw today."

"An assassin aimed at the King, from a place of concealment in a tree. Moran shot him before he could complete his design."

" _No,_ John. That's what you were told happened. Tell me what you saw."

Abruptly, John did see. "A duck. Lone and high, scared up by the drivers from the reed-beds across the lake."

"And then we heard two shots. No doubt the first was Moran's. The second came only when the stranger's gun fell from his hands. It discharged on hitting the ground. The barrel was distorted; the muzzle must have been blocked with mud."

"Ye-es –"

"So, what caused Moran to look behind him? The drive was just beginning – every man's attention was on the far side of the lake. Save only his. Why?"

The enormity of the implication almost deprived John of the power of speech. He prayed the storm raging outside would block any chance of being overheard.

"You believe Moran knew in advance of the assassin's presence?"

Sherlock's breath brushed John's ear as he spoke. "The wind blew from the heronry towards the lake. Moran claims his instincts alerted him to a sound from the trees. He swivelled, caught a glimpse of the gun, and fired on instinct."

"But?"

"The King has trained himself to use acute hearing in the field to compensate for indifferent sight. Yet the King heard nothing. And what could Moran have heard? The assassin must have planned to fire during the height of the drive, when the sound of an additional shot would have gone unnoticed. The last thing he would have done would be to make a noise before it started."

John's own instincts were utterly on edge. He cast his mind back to the scene beneath the tree: the bloody mess of the man's face, the mangled wreck of his weapon – 

He poked Sherlock gently in the ribs. "Tell me about the gun."

"You heard me at the scene. A first-class example of the gunsmith's art."

"Yes. Quite. You told everyone that. Complete with a touching story about your father's wedding present from the King of France."

"That was quite true –"

John clicked his tongue gently against the back of his teeth, another trick his father used with fractious patients. "I don't doubt it. But your parents' wedding was what – twenty-five years ago?"

"Ye-es." Sherlock sounded wary. Fine. Let him chew on this.

"Guns have changed out of all recognition since then. Especially among those who can afford to pay for the best. I'd bet you ten thaler that however fine your father's guns were when they were made, they'll not have been used in the field since before you left the nursery."

Either dawn was on its way or his eyes were adjusting to the gloom of the bivouac. Sherlock's face showed tense and unhappy. 

"I doubt they were ever fired in anger. My father kept them in their presentation case. Mycroft's got them now. He always did have an exaggerated regard for the French."

John treated the last sentence as the blatant attempt at misdirection it was and pressed doggedly on.

"Makers always put their marks in the same place. Below the pan, in this case. But you couldn't have seen that on a gun kept in a presentation case. So?"

Sherlock gave a short, exasperated sigh. "Don't you realise _yet_ what's going on?" He made a dismissive, cutting gesture with the side of his hand: mimicry of a headsman's axe. "Not just treason. An attempt to provoke war between Gondal and Gaaldine."

The stench of intrigue swirled, thick and menacing, in the muddy air of the bivouac. John gulped, and spoke the most difficult two words he had ever uttered.

"Go on."

"The assassin’s face was destroyed – unrecognisable. But the little finger of his left hand was crooked, as if crushed in some accident long ago. You doubtless remarked it."

John cleared his throat. "I did. I thought he must have been lucky to keep the finger."

"My grandfather's physician is very expert." The grimness in Sherlock's voice almost masked, for a second, his meaning. 

"What? You knew him?"

"I would recognise that hand anywhere." He paused for a moment, and then added, "It steadied my own, when I was first learning to shoot."

They said drowning men saw the whole of their lives unrolling in the instant before they died. John had never understood how anyone knew. Still, in that split second, he saw the future enfolding in fire and blood. He saw marching men, burning buildings, sacked cities. And he saw Sherlock, kneeling to rest his chin on a block, and a hooded headsman stepping up behind him.

His voice came out almost unnaturally calm. "Who was he? A – a relative?"

"A distant cousin. For many years his father, Viscount Hambledon, headed my grandfather's Council. A little over a year ago, they quarrelled." He paused. "Two weeks later the head of Palace Security uncovered a web of peculation, the Viscount at its very centre. He had, it seemed, been exploiting his position as head of the Council to considerable effect."

John gulped. "It was a set-up?"

Dawn was coming; he could see Sherlock's considering expression. 

"No. I had suspected for years that greed was the Viscount's besetting weakness. Doubtless grandfather had as well. He was always given to ostentation. As when two years ago he gave his son a coming of age present; a pair of hunting rifles made by the same craftsmen as those my father had received from the King of France."

" _That_ gun was one of the two?"

"Unmistakable. I have fired it myself."

Another pause; the note of desolation in Sherlock's voice deepened. "They told me Alexander had gone abroad. I hoped – perhaps – he might become a famous general, a soldier of fortune, and so win his recall that way. I never thought –" 

His voice failed at last. John pulled him tight against his chest in a frantic, fumbling attempt at comfort, his anger raging white hot at the bloody thing whose overweening ambition had brought things to such a pass. 

Sherlock turned to him, clinging as hard as he had when in the grip of nightmare. "I can't see the way out. There's too much in this plot. Who put Alexander into the tree? Who told Moran he was going to be there? Did whoever it was intend to spoil the Earl's plans for his daughter, or was that just collateral damage?"

Clear as a hunting horn, John heard the one question Sherlock had not put into words: the question he could not bear to speak.

"He probably never suspected you were to be of the party. If he left Gaaldine over a year ago, I doubt he would even have known you were in Gondal. He cannot have meant to betray you."

It was now fully light. Sherlock sat bolt upright, his face fierce, exultant with some revelation.

"Don't change, John. Promise me never to change."

He scrambled to his feet. "At the pace the King's setting, this party will be in the capital by late morning tomorrow. I must seek audience of the Queen. She has a subtle mind. She will understand that a gun may be aimed at one man and targeted in quite another direction."

Then he was out into the grey, weeping, hopeless dawn, leaving John alone and puzzling.


	7. Chapter 7

Bad news ran fast. The first intimation of trouble came by pigeon. General Napier, demanding extra troops to support him in an arrest. No details, but the numbers demanded told of an important detainee, someone who could muster a formidable resistance if not crushed instantly. The ring on the pigeon's leg revealed it from the batch sent to one of the guard posts on the great North-East road in the spring. 

She despatched an order via the signal-tower network to release the troops required from the nearest garrison, cancelled all engagements and retreated to her own quarters to chew over the possibilities. 

The next day dawned blustery; the mountains surrounding the capital invisible under a thick blanket of low cloud. No more pigeons, and the signal network was useless in the conditions. She spent another sleepless night.

Sometime during the forenoon the clouds lifted enough for Napier's latest message to get through, naming the arrestee and the charge for the first time.

_Fountainhall. Suspicion of complicity in a treasonous plot, happily foiled._

She tried to suppress a welling sense of relief. 

The bull-reek of ambition hung thick around all the lords of the Court. She had developed a nose keen as a dairymaid's for when that ambition turned rancid. The Earl had had the stink of it all through the spring. And, too, he had an unmarried daughter, just turned sixteen. Despite herself, her eyes turned to the handbill someone had thrust amid her papers that morning.

_Shlessinger. Always Shlessinger._

The Earl's daughter no longer represented a threat to her, but there would be others. Until she could present the kingdom with an heir, there would always be others. As her maid said, once she produced that heir, no-one would query how.

She reached for the handbill, just as a knock sounded at the door. She pushed it back and coughed, to indicate that whoever it was might enter.

The messenger who stumbled into the room, flanked by two of the Palace guards, had a face masked with the mud of the road, covered in scratches as if he'd ridden hard through woodland, low branches whipping his face. Her mouth went dry with fear. 

"A private audience, your grace," the messenger croaked.

The accent of North-East Gondal – except for a slight sibilance, a fluting, familiar preciousness on the vowels. She turned to the guards.

"Leave us."

They looked horrified. "But your grace - "

She summoned all of her father's menace into her expression. "This man has news for my ears only. Leave us and post guards on the corridor. Let none approach till we are done."

When the guards had left, she pulled him into the centre of the room, furthest from any points of eavesdropping.

"What in the name of the Holy Virgin do you think you're playing at? What has happened to Ambrosine? Is the King safe?"

"An interesting ranking of questions," Prince Sherlock drawled. "The King, I judge, is less than a turn behind me on the road. He believes me to lie in a charcoal-burner's cottage near our last rest stop. I feigned illness and John elected to drop out to tend to me. Once the King's party was out of sight I staged a sudden recovery and cut across country; a single scout can almost invariably outrun a group of horsemen: at least, barring interception or injury to his horse."

"And why?" 

Unexpectedly, he dropped to his knees, stretching his hands up in supplication.

"My lady – your grace. Before I left to go hunting, I warned you I believed my grandfather was looking to provoke an occasion of war between our lands."

She nodded, tight lipped. "You also said that you thought he would not consummate his designs for some time to come."

"That is true." Prince Sherlock hesitated, and then added, very softly, "As you are aware, my brother is lately betrothed and is to be wed by Christmas. As soon as my grandfather sees heirs down that line, Gondal should look to her borders."

"These things cannot be commanded," she snapped. "Even by his grace the King of Gaaldine. He could be waiting long."

The prince's pale eyes showed no trace either of pity or surprise. "He could. Though my grandfather, when balked in one direction, will turn down another line, rather than keep trying endlessly that which has proved futile before. In any event, you are correct. Barring unforeseen circumstances, he intends the treaty to hold for at least another eighteen months. It gives you an avenue to exploit."

"Your advice is noted. I remain baffled by your motives in conveying it."

He remained on his knees – an awkward pose, it would have been, for one lacking his natural grace. 

"When the King's grace arrives, ma'am, he will inform you that – but for the quick wits and superior aim of Lord Moran – he would have fallen victim to an assassin's bullet, the assassin being concealed in a tree on the Earl of Fountainhall's ground."

Such a hair's breadth escape. She might have been the barren widow of the late King, and what then would have become of her? And who would have cared?

No reason for anyone else to have seen Prince James' hooded-eyed, sidelong glances. She had only realised herself how much they had been troubling her since his banishment from court had lifted the burden.

A great gift, then. 

A prince of Gaaldine was kneeling before her in muddy messenger's gear.

_Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes._

"Oh, do get up. I cannot converse with you in that position. You advise me that this act of gallantry and quick thinking is not to be taken at face value?"

He scrambled to his feet. 

"Your grace, I speak this for your ears alone. Gondal's agents will, of course, examine the Earl of Fountainhall and all his associates in exhaustive detail. That may have value; I suggest you pay particular attention to any communications he or his sons-in-law may have had with experts in the canon law. But it will not link him to the assassin in the tree." 

_Canon law. The Earl of Fountainhall's sixteen-year old daughter and her insolently fecund older sisters._ She forced her eyes to look only at the prince, to avoid a betraying glance sideways to the handbill buried among her papers.

"No? And where will that trail lead?"

The prince steepled his hands beneath his chin. "It will be long cold by the time they receive enough information to follow it."

She glared at him. "So? I presume you came here for some reason other than play-acting?"

"I came here to postpone a war. Or, at worst, to change its nature. Tell me – for we are not overheard – would you raise your own flag, were a cruel Fate to snatch your husband from you?"

She gulped. How dare he raise the thought that had tormented so many sleepless nights, as if it were nothing?

"You speak treason."

"Hardly. I owe Gondal no allegiance and, in any event, I speak purely in hypotheticals." He gestured with angry precision. "It seems to me the height of absurdity that you could not serve as monarch, since if the assassin's bullet had found its mark you would doubtless have become regent for the heir, as your grandmother was during your father's minority. Why allow a woman the substance of power, but deny her its shadow?"

"This is not my grandmother's day. Arguments might be raised that different times required a different solution, were a regency to arise now. Prince James is not an infant, and could be expected to resent being subjected to the authority of a woman. Many would sympathise with him." She paused, and added, very precisely, "Especially if we were under threat of war at the time."

Prince Sherlock closed his eyes and exhaled. 

"Of course. The missing piece." He opened his eyes and looked directly at her. "King Ambrosine has had a great shock. Of course, he is inordinately grateful to Lord Moran; he will bring him into his inner circle. A circle in which he will have constant access to Prince James. Become the very man to have great influence on any Council of Regency, were one to arise in the next two years." 

He paused for a moment, to underline his point. 

"Of course, Moran and the Prince are at odds. But the King loves to play peace-maker. What could be more proper than gracious reconciliation on the part of the heir – an acknowledgement, if not of fault, at least of error? The friendship mended – more than mended; tested in the fire and reforged ten-fold stronger."

She would have liked to call for wine, as she had last time. Time was slipping by, though, counted out in the hoofbeats of the King's party on the road to the capital. 

"Why are you telling me this?"

His eyes opened very wide. "Because I want you to instruct your people to find the links between Prince James and the assassin, before time erodes them."

Much later, it occurred to her she should have been a great deal more shocked than she was. She had, she realised belatedly, been waiting for this moment 

"Do you know who the assassin was?" 

Prince Sherlock hesitated, and then nodded. 

"I do. He was the son – once the heir – of a disgraced nobleman of Gaaldine. And I have no doubt that he had been led to believe that Gaaldine's interests would be served by his – by his making that shot count. A murderer, a dupe, but not – in his heart – a traitor. Ma'am."

"So your claim this is not a foreign plot rests on your bare word? When your life depends on Gaaldine not committing an act of aggression against Gondal?"

He drew himself up straight. "Quite. That is precisely how it has been contrived to look, to those of lesser intellects. So in this crisis I could come only to you."

She almost laughed aloud at the outrageous flattery. Touching, though. And heartening. She had not realised how deep the chill between her and Ambrosine had penetrated, until she had noted that she was no longer enveloped in flattery.

He looked irritated and, somehow, flustered, in a way that the dirt and blood of his journey had not achieved. 

"I meant that. I also meant what I said when we met in this room earlier. My grandfather will not forgive someone who removes one of his pieces from the board prematurely. In this, at this time, he will aid you."

"He is pledged by treaty to come to the aid of Gondal, if threatened." Her voice came from somewhere remote.

Prince Sherlock made a side-edge chopping motion with his hand. " _Not_ Gondal. _You_. Your grace, my grandfather is a man of many parts, but he cannot resist a woman of wit. Your reputation on that score stands high in our court."

 _Wit._ She supposed it was some consolation to be valued for a quality she actually possessed. No-one, after all, would ever have called her a beauty.

"What do you suggest?"

"Before the King's party arrive, send to my grandfather privately via the Gaaldine ambassador. Tell him that it is bruited abroad that Viscount Hambledon's son has crossed the border and entered into schemes with ambitious and disaffected men within your realm. Advise him that there are those within the inner councils of Gondal who will turn such offences, should they be proved, into occasions of war. Assure him you are persuaded the roots of this canker have a source inside Gondal. Offer him your support, if he do but share with you such intelligence as he has or may procure which might validate your suspicions."

For the longest of moments she paused. Then she nodded. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."

Prince Sherlock's expression seemed, for a moment, unutterably bleak. "My grandfather has no friends." He thought for a moment. "Though he respects his allies at least there is while no reason for him to do otherwise."

She made a quick shooing motion with her hands. "Go. Get yourself to whatever rendezvous you have planned with John Watson before my husband finds you here. I will act as you suggest. Though my authority is limited –" 

Her voice broke.

"Trust me. I will not hold it against you, should the Council of Gondal conclude that Gaaldine has forfeited its pledge." His voice sounded unexpectedly gentle, though there was a tremor in it. "But I will, indeed, leave you now."

He turned, towards the door. As he was passing the table his hand stretched out and slid Shlessinger's handbill from beneath the papers. She twitched involuntarily as he scrutinised it. 

_No-one could suspect? Idiot._

"Has Hamish Watson brought his concerns to you?" Prince Sherlock's voice was no more than coolly interested. "A wise move. John tells me this man Shlessinger has troubled his father for some considerable time."

Something caught at her throat. "Has he?" 

"Oh, indeed. As a physician, Watson is intensely sceptical of wonder-cures which do not appear to derive in any logical manner from the existing body of medical knowledge. As a rationalist, he is even more sceptical of the magical explanation. Having eliminated legitimate innovation and supernatural intervention, chicanery must be the answer."

"Chicanery? Has he proof?"

Prince Sherlock shook his head. "Hamish Watson is - by virtue of his position – ill-placed to be consulted on the matter. Yet he told us a story, before we left on the hunting trip, which plainly bothered him. He had to be oblique, so I am unsure if he was telling one woman's story or a composite of several, or perhaps even extrapolating from a few known facts and foreshadowing a tragedy yet to occur."

"Go on. " She assumed an expression of guileless concern, which she was persuaded fooled the prince not in the slightest. "My confidential maid has spoken of consulting this man for her married sister. I can hardly endorse such a plan if I do not know everything. But hurry."

"Some years ago, it seems, a lady of great estate and high rank married a man of similar degree. When the union remained unblessed with offspring the lady turned to Shlessinger. She did so in the greatest secrecy, not even telling her husband of her intentions. That – proved unwise."

Her palms began to prickle with sweat. 

"Go on."

"Her intermediary brought a message for her to attend in a certain graveyard at moonrise. There, she met a robed and hooded man. Without speaking, he motioned for her to stand within a pentagram he described on the ground."

She shivered, as if she herself were standing in that graveyard.

"What then?"

The prince pursed his lips. "Guards set on by the Bishop of the diocese – clearly alerted of the assignation in advance – burst onto the scene. The man escaped; the lady was taken into custody. Among the paraphernalia seized in the graveyard were books and rods inscribed with runes. Experts in such matters pronounced them those used in a conjuring."

It was an effort to stop her voice shaking. "What happened?"

"Shlessinger denied all knowledge of the lady. Further, he could establish he had spent the evening at home, on the far side of the city, with unimpeachable witnesses. The intermediary vanished. No-one supported her story – she had not, as you recall, discussed her plans with her husband."

"And the outcome?" 

A question with only one likely answer. No prosecutor in any of the three kingdoms would overlook damning evidence of an attempt to raise the spirits of the dead. 

"She was convicted of witchcraft and necromancy. And burned." 

Her hand went to her mouth. "Holy Mary." 

"Quite so. The husband remarried – indecently quickly, some said, but there was, after all, the business of an heir to consider. Especially since her dower lands had fallen into her husband's sole control on her execution."

Her mouth was dry. She could see how it had been – how it might be. She could see something else, too.

"And did that hasty marriage prove fruitful?"

The prince shook his head. "No. That was the aspect Hamish Watson found most tragic about the whole business. The husband had not respected his marriage vows, yet none of his numerous liaisons had produced offspring. Most probably, the curse lay with him. On his death the estates passed to a collateral branch of the family. His young widow remarried, to the new heir. I understand she is now the mother of a substantial family."

"I see." She did, clearly. The story must be, in large measure, a fabrication. The time frame was all wrong for it to be otherwise. A fable, but nonetheless important.

_The trading of information, the only currency worth anything at all._

"Thank you for your frankness. I shall advise my maid to have nothing to do with Shlessinger. Tell Hamish Watson he will have my full support in any action he chooses to take to expose trickery on the man's part. I shall advise the King accordingly. Now, for God's sake, go!"

He bowed over her hand, brushed it with his lips, and was gone. Down in the Great Court she could hear the pounding of hoof beats, followed by a roar of voices, welcoming the King.


	8. Chapter 8

"But _why_?" Harry demanded, not for the first time. 

John reflected how much the last weeks had changed her. Before, on the fleeting occasions she had met him, she had seen Sherlock as a dazzling exotic, like a phoenix or a cameleopard, and had been far too overcome to address two consecutive words to him. Now she treated him, if not with contempt, at least with a kind of breezy disregard. It seemed she had not taken long to learn that distinction, most important to anyone setting out to swim in treacherous Court waters, between those merely _of rank_ and those who _mattered._

A muscle tightened in his jaw. He wished – again, not for the first time – that the nursery retaliation of hair-pulling was now forever beyond his reach. 

He caught a sidelong glint of amusement in Sherlock's expression.

"We need a dress which is known to have been worn at Court. Your aquamarine satin fits the bill admirably. Anyone with an artist's eye will have remarked it. How fortunate that Clarence Duplessis cannot tell red from green and doubtless sees it in some indifferent shade of murk."

" _Fortunate_?" Harry almost yelped, as if Sherlock had indeed pulled her hair.

He raised his eyebrows. "If you dress to catch someone's eye, I'm sure you wish it to be for the right reasons. And yet, that dress – while of the finest fabric – does nothing to flatter your colouring. It appears almost as if it had been made for a different woman."

Harry looked as if she'd been hit. An ugly flush rose on her cheeks. Given eighteen years' experience of Harry's expressions, John knew there'd either be tears or violence within minutes, and quite probably both.

"Look, I'm sure Sherlock didn't mean –"

"You are, of course, concerned lest we damage it." Sherlock's voice was now coolly business-like. "I quite understand. Fine fabrics are, of course, also the frailest. A deal, then. Bespeak a new gown at the Queen's dressmakers – don't feel any need to stint yourself, but please in the name of God listen to their advice about colour – and I'll underwrite all charges."

" _You'll_ pay for a new gown?" 

Disbelief and avidity warred in Harry's expression; John could hardly have said which angered him more. Stymied by his sister, he turned to Sherlock.

"That's quite out of the question. Think of the gossip. What would happen if news got to your grandfather that you'd been buying gowns for the one of the ladies of the Queen's bed-chamber?"

"Grandfather? Quite frankly, I suspect he'd order the chapel bells rung." 

There was a great deal he could have said to that, had it not been for Harry's presence (she was, damn her, looking far too knowing; further proof of the corrupting effects of Court). 

"In any event," Sherlock added, "the Queen is apprised of our intentions. Anyone trying to spread scandal will have her to contend with. So, that being settled, and you being assured of a new gown whether we bring the original back or not, may we please borrow that aquamarine satin affair?"

The mention of the Queen, not unmixed with self-interest, clinched the matter.   
They escaped with the prize, and repaired to a shabby little wineshop in the student quarter. 

Less than a year ago the wineshop had been John's refuge, on days when the incomparable wonder and mystery that was the human body had defeated him. 

Notwithstanding the passage of time, when Sherlock had asked him to find somewhere they could talk, with no risk of being remarked by anyone from the Court, his steps had led them unerringly to The Ragged Doctor. That, no doubt, spoke volumes about him, to anyone able to decipher it. 

"So. We've got Harry's gown. Now tell. What do you need it for?" 

Sherlock stretched back in his chair, his booted legs crossed at the ankles, blending effortlessly into his surroundings. To any passing drinker, he was a just another impoverished, wandering scholar. 

"Isn't it obvious? Dr Shlessinger – I am quite sure – has been primed to expect an approach from one within the Queen's circle. He will expect that person to approach in disguise. The crucial thing is to give him what he expects."

"And who's the woman you have inveigled into this nonsense?"

Sherlock tipped his head back, exposing an impossible length of white throat as he laughed. "Haven't you worked that out yet? Well. Wait."


	9. Chapter 9

The graveyard stank. It stank of rotting flowers and damp, unkempt grass. It stank of piss and excrement. Most of all, though, it stank of decay. The city's expansion had put grave space at a premium; bodies were barely allowed to lie beneath the chapel floor a decade before they were exhumed, the bones carted to ossuaries, and other corpses interred in their place. Outside the chapel older gravestones, relicts of an era when it had been possible to bespeak a resting place in perpetuity, leaned at crazy angles. Many had cracked under the pressure of who-knew-how-many cycles of sodden autumns, baking summers and the iron frosts of winter.

John, crouched between the bulging chapel wall and one of the taller tombstones, suppressed a stab of pure, irrational terror. He chided himself. If the Devil was abroad tonight, it was only within the desires and devices of men's own hearts. Strong arms and sharp wits were their defences, not holy water and counter-rituals.

A stir of movement by the graveyard's iron gate caused him to press further into his hiding place. A veiled figure advanced with short, precisely placed steps, holding delicate satin skirts above the squalid mire underfoot.

She had almost reached the chapel door when it creaked open. A thin band of lamplight spilled out; a man, robed and hooded, stepped out into its glow. 

"So. You came." His voice was rich, sonorous, with a faint foreign intonation, not that of any of the three kingdoms. 

"What choice did I have?" 

The hairs rose on the back of John's neck. The veiled woman had a servant-girl's sloppily enunciated consonants and over-rounded vowels, but those were the flimsiest of affectations. Shining through, like a diamond in a dark place, was a purity of diction that could have no source but one.

 _What persuasion can Sherlock possibly have used on her_? And then: _the King will kill us all, if he finds out._

That thought hit him with a heady rush, stronger than brandy or kif. Dizzy, he stood as if on a precipice, with sharp rocks yawning below, ready to claim him if he made one false move. The thrills of play, of the chase, even of the bedroom paled beside the all-encompassing surge of the moment. If he died next minute – well, nonetheless _he would have lived_.

The hooded man's tone became almost indecently seductive. "I know your deepest care. Put your trust in me and I will relieve you."

"But at what cost?" The woman's voice was a breathy near whisper.

"Be assured, ma'am, my charges are most reasonable." The honey-laden voice acquired a sharper edge, a bee-sting lurking amid the sweetness. "Can you, indeed, afford _not_ to pay them? Situated as you are?" 

"I spoke of cost, not charges. One cannot play with edged tools and not risk cutting one's hands. What will tonight's doings cost?" 

John's heart ached. So gallant, so vulnerable. So lonely.

The hooded man laughed aloud. "My dear, from the moment you crossed the threshold of this ground you were committed. You have all to lose and nothing to save by retreating now."

For a moment John truly felt in the presence of something diabolic. His fingers curled around the dagger at his belt.

The veiled figure paused, then nodded. "Proceed. I am prepared."

John's nerves quivered. Where was Sherlock? Everything about this betrayed a trap, even the location. No-one would arrange an innocent assignation here. 

With a flourish, the hooded man reached into some recess in the walls and withdrew a slender wand, perhaps three feet long. He gestured with its point, describing lines on the ground about his companion's feet. She stood like a statue, the folds of her cloak draped around her with a grace a sculptor might have spent hours trying to achieve.

The man bent to retrace the lines in chalk.

"Hold it there, conjuror!"

A shout cracked the night, loud as thunder. Suddenly there were men all over the graveyard, their harness jingling, multiple torches blazing pitilessly down. The hooded man dropped his wand, bundled up his robes, and sprinted for the rear wall of the graveyard.

"John. Don't let him get away!" Sherlock's voice, startlingly close. He swung his head from side to side, trying to see where the prince was hiding.

"No _time_ , John. Deal with him; I'll handle things here."

With that John was away. Over the wall – a long drop onto cobbles in the narrow wynd on the far side – a stumbled landing, lucky not to twist his ankle – a flap of black robe vanishing round the corner ahead – 

Feet pounding, heart racing, exulting in his youth and speed, his city unrolling before him, his quarry – bulkier, slower, a stranger, weighed down by age and his own sins – looming ever larger before him, no escape possible –

The fleeing man's foot hit a patch of rotting vegetables, he grunted, slithered, windmilled his arms in a frantic effort to regain his balance. John launched himself forward, caught him round the hips and brought him crashing down.

The hooded man lay still beneath him, too dazed or spent to offer any resistance. John had never been one to take needless chances. On leaving his father's house that evening he'd taken certain precautions. He fumbled inside his jerkin for the lunatic restraints. 

Only when the leather cuffs were buckled tight around ankles and wrists, and the stout cord pulled tight, leaving his prisoner like a trussed chicken in the filth of the wynd did he raise his head and bellow out, "I have secured the wizard! Here!"

The guards were efficient, soldierly men who brushed off all his attempts to explain his presence with a curt, "That's for the captain's ears, sir." 

They shouldered their bundle and strode back to the graveyard, John in their wake.

Around the fringes of the graveyard a crowd had gathered. They packed the wynd, standing on boxes and each other's shoulders to glimpse what was transpiring within. Those at the back, safe amid the invisibility of numbers, called out ribaldries at the woman who stood, draped in Harry's aquamarine satin gown, in the full glare of the torches. 

She had been allowed to retain her veil. John could hardly have expressed the gratitude he felt to the captain of the guard for that infinitesimal, priceless grace.

"He caught him, sir," the largest of the guards said, nodding in John's direction as they deposited their trussed burden at the captain's feet. 

"How fortuitous you were able to assist us," the captain said. John cocked an ear, alert to any hint of sarcasm. Sherlock was, still, nowhere to be seen and the plan – sketchily outlined in the wineshop earlier – had included no details about what happened once they secured Shlessinger. Nor, indeed, did he know whether the intervention of the authorities had been planned or simply predicted.

"Shall we see what you've caught?" The captain bent down and, with one move, ripped off the hood. A man – perhaps in his forties, though his ascetic, aquiline features and close cropped hair made his true age hard to gauge – blinked up at them in the torchlight. Despite the situation, the hint of a superior sneer hung about the curve of his finely sculpted lips.

"Dr Shlessinger, is it?" 

Tied as he was, he could hardly shrug. Still, the man contrived a suitably dismissive wriggle of his shoulders. "If I spoke my real name your ears could not encompass it and your puny brains would stretch and crack in terror. But in this age and time they call me Shlessinger, yes."

Ignoring the awed ripples running through the crowd, the guard captain nodded cheerfully. "Ah, well, we get plenty who don't care to share their birth names with us. It's all one, so that we have the name they go by in the city. And that would be Shlessinger. Very good. So, what brings you to this churchyard?"

The doctor looked sideways at the impassive veiled figure, then away.

"I came here at the behest of a lady. It is hardly for me to betray her confidence."

The captain stooped down and picked up the wand. "And your explanation for this?"

Shlessinger managed almost to sound bored. "I find it assists in concentrating the mind when casting a horoscope. You are not, I take it, an enemy of the science? I think you would find few to stand beside you if you were."

"So you and this lady came here to cast a horoscope?" The captain's eye swept the decaying graveyard, and his expression spoke volumes. 

"I cannot betray a patient's confidence," Shlessinger said. "However, a physician would be trebly a fool, whatever the consultation, not to commence by consulting the stars."

"I see." The captain had his booted foot resting on a flat-topped tomb, a seemingly negligent pose which nonetheless conveyed an air of subtle energy. His troop were carefully deployed about the graveyard's perimeter, leaving the crowd in no doubt that any attempt to press closer would lead to summary retribution. That being understood, the captain seemed more than happy to continue to provide a free show for the neighbourhood. 

John's nerves prickled. He had no regard for Shlessinger – the man could hang for all he cared, and the world would be a cleaner place for it – but if this went on much longer it became close to inevitable that the woman's veil would slip. After that – he shuddered. How to tell the captain he was playing with fire? And, more to the point, where the _hell_ was Sherlock?

Another guard forced his way through the crowd around the gate and trotted up to the captain, extending a piece of paper. From the distance and the erratic flickering of the torches John could make little of it – some sort of handbill, garnished with crude woodcuts. 

The captain waved it under Shlessinger's nose. "This one of yours?"

For the first time Shlessinger's air of contemptuous ease faltered. 

"I have no need of such stuff. Those who wish to avail themselves of my services can always find me." He paused. "Though from time to time those I have helped choose to laud me in this fashion." Again, that delicate wriggle of the shoulders. "I can hardly prevent it, though I do not encourage it. But you will understand I cannot control what they choose to say. "

Nicely handled, even though the captain plainly believed as little of it as John did. He snorted audibly. "This – unsolicited testimonial – refers to your 'lifting the curse of Elizabeth and Sarah'. That would mean curing barrenness, would it not?"

"Your Biblical knowledge is to be commended. Nonetheless, my point remains. I cannot discuss individual cases."

"But, in this case, _I_ can." The pure, fluting voice was unmistakable. Both the captain and – to the extent he could, given his restraints – Shlessinger craned their heads towards the veiled figure. The crowd, sensing a change in the wind, fell almost silent. She reached inside her bosom, produced a small sheaf of papers and extended them to the captain.

"These are the notes exchanged between me and Dr Shlessinger arranging this rendezvous. I think you'll find what you need in them."

"You fool! I told you to burn – "

Shlessinger broke off, abruptly. The captain nodded. "Thank you, ma'am." He scanned the notes, lips pursed. "I see. Barrenness, indeed."

"Which the good doctor hastened to assure me – given a suitable alignment of the planets and constellations – _Sol_ featured extensively, as did _Draconis_ – he had every expectation of resolving." 

Something about the timbre of the veiled woman's voice gave John a heart-beat of warning – no more, certainly. Then the veil dropped. Sherlock smiled out on the assembled crowd. 

"Of course," he added, "I suspect Dr Shlessinger – whatever his talents – might have found this particular problem in barrenness rather beyond him. _Sol_ and _Draconis_ notwithstanding."

He had pitched his voice to carry – full, deep and very definitely a man's. A shocked gasp from the crowd modulated into outbreaks of nervous giggles and then, like sparks amid the stubble driven by a warm, rising harvest wind, gales and waves of laughter. Had there ever been any demons in the graveyard, they would surely have fled before that barrage of pure, human hilarity. 

Shlessinger curled round in a heap on the stinking grass, his arm shrugged up to conceal his face. John thought he seemed somehow smaller, deflated.

"Well," the captain said, the hints of a broad grin still about his mouth, "for a man who promotes himself as famous magician, it's bad practice not to divine that one coming."

Sherlock's grin matched his. "Perhaps you might suggest an amendment to the handbills?"

"Oh, I think we won't be seeing any more of those. Not after Shlessinger's spent a day in the stocks and left town with his tail between his legs."

John gaped. "The stocks? I thought – I mean, necromancy isn't exactly small beer."

The captain's grin widened. "Ah, yes, but that's the Archbishop's business. Us, we're the city authorities. Adulterated beer, verdigris in the wine, plaster in the flour. Charlatans skinning money off desperate women. This one – " he nudged Shlessinger in the ribs with his boot-toe, none too gently. "He's our department. Leave him to us. Don't want him to get the reputation of being a _real_ wizard." 

He raised his hand in a salute to Sherlock. "Our respects to the lady who put you onto his practices, sir. Not many at Court would have such a mind to their waiting gentlewoman, or to her married sister, neither. Whoever she is, sir, she's a good one. Tell her that from the lads."


	10. Epilogue

The parade of post-chapel courtiers had dissipated from the Great Court, leaving only a handful of stragglers. She turned from the window as the footman flung the door wide to admit Prince James.

His eyes were all pupil; black pits which yawned onto a well of emptiness that made her cold even to contemplate. He stalked across the room without the barest pretence of courtesy. 

"This is an outrage. How dare you drive me from Court? Yes; you. I know who has worked against me, who has poisoned the King's mind."

She had rehearsed this moment over anxious days past, ever since she had – after half a day's prayer and restless pacing in her private chambers – finally plucked up the courage to speak to Ambrosine.

"That does not lie in your mouth to say. Trust me, this is an opportunity which comes to few, even in your rank in life. You travel with Our countenance and with letters of introduction to every court and every university in Europe. The doctors of Padua, Vienna, Leyden, Paris, Oxford and Rome will be clamouring for the opportunity to discourse with you and I know – from your tutors' reports – that you will make best use of that chance."

"You drive me into exile."

She paused. Took a deep breath. And then smiled. The prince was too well-disciplined to take a step backwards, but she saw the recoil in his eyes. 

"That choice you made for yourself. Trust me, it is better than the alternatives." 

There was a brown card folder on her desk. Its contents had come in dribs and drabs and been handed over by the Gaaldine Ambassador, piecemeal, over numerous tiny cups of chocolate. She opened it, and felt rather than heard the prince's gasp of shock as he took in the top item; a beautifully precise surgeon's drawing of a hand, the little finger almost hanging by a thread.

"Don't," she said, her voice low and deadly. "Do not say anything. Yes; there is more. Far more. Were you of full age, it would be enough to take you to the block."

"That would split the country. A country that sees no clear succession lies uneasy beneath the King's hand."

"I said, do not say anything. We are minded to show leniency." Or, rather, Ambrosine was. She had counselled against it - _Kill the snake in the shell, lest it bite you later_ – but been overruled. Had there been a babe in the royal nursery, Ambrosine would have heeded her advice, not the false logic of succession.

_Would you raise your own flag, were a cruel Fate to widow you?_

She knew the answer; it was staring at her across her private chamber with dark, empty eyes.

_James of Gondal, whatever the price, I shall see this land never comes to you, while there is breath in my body._

"So far as the Court knows, you go abroad to pursue your studies. I advise you to learn well. Very well."

"Oh, trust me, I shall." 

When he had gone she sat in silence for a long time, the words resounding in her ears, dull and unforgiving, like earth on a coffin lid.


End file.
